44 percent users have never tweeted: Here’s why Twitter should be worried

Technology, April 15, Shruti Dhapola: A new report by Twopchart, a social media tracking website, has claimed that44 percent of Twitter’s accounts do not have a single tweet sent out from them, while 30 percent of existing accounts have only 1-10 tweets to their credit.

44 percent users have never tweeted: Here’s why Twitter should be worried

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For a company, that went public recently on the New York Stock Exchange, the fact that nearly 44 percent of its users don’t have a single tweet can be seen as worrying sign. So what does it really mean for Twitter?

First and foremost let’s take a quick look at the data that Twopchart at put out. According to Twopchart, Twitter has currently 982.8 million estimated existing Twitter accounts. Now that’s a pretty steep number, given that Twitter itself had recently announced that has 244 million monthly active users in the last quarter of 2013. For Twitter, a monthly active users is one who logs into the site at least once in a month, and tweeting isn’t a necessity always.

If there are so many Twitter accounts, then it is worrying that a majority of these are not logging into the social website even once a month. However, the better way to look at this is that Twitter already has the numbers, it just needs to work on getting the user engagement up.

Twopcharts says that also only 13 percent of registered Twitter accounts have more than a 100 tweets. In terms of user engagement this is again a low percentage. What is not clear is whether retweets are counted in this data.

What the Twopchart report highlights is the user engagement problem for Twitter. One of the reasons for this is the nature of the medium itself.

Let’s face it, if you choose to follow even 100 news media accounts on Twitter, your Timeline will be flooded with so many tweets within seconds that you are unlikely to be find what you’re looking for.

The high percentage of users with no tweets also reflects the fact that perhaps many users don’t really know what to do on the social networking site once they log in. These could just be people content with reading other people’s tweets, feeling no inclination to share.

Then, of course there is the problem of getting followers. Twitter is also about gaining followers and interacting with them on Twitter. For users, who don’t manage to get followers soon enough, they are likely to lose interest in Twitter and not tweet that often.

It should be noted that that Twopchart is unable to track when a users logs into the account. This is fairly important, because they are many users who might just be logging in, reading content of their choice on Twitter and logging out. They may not choose to engage by actively tweeting but they are still using the medium to get access to information.

Where Twitter perhaps is failing is in trying to get these users to actively join the conversation. For many advertisers, the fact that over 44 percent users haven’t even felt the need to join the conversation, won’t inspire a lot of confidence. It should also be noted that the huge barrage of tweets and retweets every day is what Twitter is counting on to increase its advertising revenue. Non-active users who aren’t contributing to the discussion are bad in this regard and show the network in a bad light, leaving the 244 million monthly active users carrying the bulk of the load as far as interaction and engagement is concerned.